CvLl.D}}-- 'T'm right there in the room, and no one even acknowledges me." . others, including American Presidents, would come, too." Mter breakfast, we boarded the heli- copters, Kagame in tow, and headed for a hospital in the village of Rwinkwavu. The hospital used to serve a nearby tin mine run by Belgian colonials; now it is run by Paul Farmer, an infectious- disease specialist who first made his mark in Haiti and later in Russia, South America, and Mrica. Farmer, who be- gan Partners in Health, is hoping that with financing from the Clinton Foun- dation, the Rwandan government, and other sources he will be able to set up similar hospitals around the country. Farmer led Clinton around the hospi- tal, which treated forty thousand pa- tients last year; it is a catchment point for much of eastern Rwanda, the poor- est sector of the country. Mothers and children rested together in narrow beds and watched, wide-eyed, as Clinton strode through the ward. In a hallway, a few patients lined up to tell Clinton of their experiences. Speaking Kinyar- wanda, a woman named Solange de- scribed how she and her husband, both suffering from AIDS symptoms, sold their land in order to get treatment. She was brought to the hospital in a coma in February, and her husband died soon afterward. She began drug treat- ments in May. Her recovery, she said, 64 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 18, 2006 . "thanks to God," has been "unbelievable." "How do you feel now?" Kagame asked her. "I feel strong," she said. Then she sang a traditional Rwandan song: "Ifitweren't for the power of the Almighty, I would die." When she stopped singing, she began to cry as she thanked Clinton and the doctors for helping to save her life. Before Kagame boarded his helicop- ter to return home, he explained why he had long ago made his peace with his vis- itor. "I accept Bill Clinton's apologies. Looking back, he wished he had done more than he did, and that comes from a . " SIncere person. Paul Farmer stood nearby, listening, knowing that soon the tour would end and he would go back to work. He is forty-six and, thanks to the reputa- tion for selflessness he has built up in the field, he is routinely referred to as a saint-and he has the physique to prove it. "I'm the skinny one," Paul Farmer said to me, and added, gesturing to an- other, distincdy less skinny American, " M b th " eet my ro ere Most of the doctors and notables at the clinic wore name tags announcing their bureaucratic affiliations in the world of public health. Jeff Farmer's read "Global Ass-Whuppin' Initiative." The penny dropped. Jeff Farmer, a profes- sional wresder, had been Lightning in the tag team of Thunder & Lightning. Jeff Farmer's signature hold remains the Scorpion Death Lock. B ill Clinton generally maintains the tradition of former Presidents re- specting their successors, but the mix- ture of motives that pull at him is unique. Having stepped off the electoral merry- go-round for good, an ex-President is theoretically free to say what he really thinks. But what about an ex-President whose spouse is a senator contemplat- ing a run for even higher office? Hillary Clinton's ambitions stoke Bill Clinton's instinct to be combative on her behalf; by the same token, he must try not to say things that would force her to do a lot of explaining. "My sense is that he trims his sails on an awful lot of issues because of what it might do in terms ofHillarys career," one insider close to both Clin- tons said. As for Clinton's attitude to his White House successor, his role as the Demo- cratic Party's (and his wifès) biggest gun pushes him in one direction, while his role as a non -partisan, above-the-fray doer of global good deeds pushes him in another. A further complication is that his successor's father is the predecessor whose bid for reëlection he quashed in 1992. If the antecedents are confusing, the emotions are, too. So friendly has Clinton grown with his old opponent George H. W. Bush-they have raised more than a hundred million dollars to- gether, to help the victims of the Asian tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 200S-that one member of the Clin- tons' circle worries that "the Bush people worked hard to co-opt him," keeping Clinton quiet, or at least polite, by keep- ing him close. Many of Clinton's sentences begin ''When I was President" or "During our Administration," but he does not often begin with, for instance, "If I were Pres- ident." And yet when I asked him once whether he ever wished he were unhin- dered by the Twenty-second Amend- ment, he hesitated. "9/11-1 wish that I'd been there," Clinton said. He had been in Australia that day, to give a speech. "I wish 1'd been there beforehand, you know, when the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. finally said we agree that bin Laden did the Cole. We could have gone after Mghanistan. And